


The Substitution for the First

by Warrior_of_Art3mis



Series: The Replacement [1]
Category: Shadowhunters, The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Gen, Hurt, Max Lightwood needs a hug, Not really happy ending, One Shot, Presumed Dead, Sad, Whump, brought back to life, dead character actually alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:54:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25236496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Warrior_of_Art3mis/pseuds/Warrior_of_Art3mis
Summary: Max Lightwood died. Or at least that's what everyone thinks. Obviously, he's not dead now.
Relationships: Max Lightwood & Alec Lightwood, Max Lightwood & Isabelle Lightwood
Series: The Replacement [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1828222
Kudos: 10





	The Substitution for the First

_His life had ended at the Penhallows house in Alicante, Idris. Max felt like he was always being put aside. He wanted to fight. To be a warrior like his siblings. Like the great Jace Herondale._

_He might not know much, but he did know when he was not wanted. His sister, Izzy, had left Max with a bad man. The man’s name was Sebastian and he had called Max a kid. Max hated being called a_ **_kid_ ** _by most people, but he hated even more how the words had so easily spilled from Sebastians lips,_ **_Kid. Kid. Kid._ **

_Izzy had chastised him and told Max to_ **_grow up… Grow up… Grow up… Grow up…_ ** _Yeah, so he wasn’t an adult but neither were Alec and Izzy’s friends or Alec and Izzy themselves. In Shadowhunter terms being a teenager was the equivalent of an adult, they were even allowed to drink. For Shadowhunters it was a gift to make it to adulthood, so with their logic Max was a metaphorical teenager._

_Desperately he had tried to tell his sister that someone had climbed the demon towers. It had looked like Sebastian but he couldn't tell. Unsurprisingly, Izzy hadn’t believed him, but he didn’t blame her; it was a high stress situation._

_When Izzy’s necklace started to pulse and a demon came through the window snatching Aline up Izzy had screamed in Alec and Max’s direction to go! To be honest, what she really meant was for Max to be taken far away with no chance to help his sister. He had already gotten his first rune, so why couldn’t he help!?_

_Howling. Screeching. Bellowing. Max was taken into his brother Alec’s arms as he cried out and tried to wiggle his way from his older brothers grasp. Max was no match for Alec’s strength from years of training over him._

_When the brothers had arrived Max was furious and even more furious to see Sebastian. The man was nailing boards against the windows and had kept doing that till Izzy came to the house. Sebastian had told Max when he had tried to see outside to stand back. It wasn’t so much what the man said, it was how he said it as if he really couldn’t care less what happened to the boy. As if it couldn’t get worse, terror was freezing the boy’s mouth shut. What happened if he was stuck in this house with a liar? With that bad man? A possible murder?_

_His sister had asked Max“if he was alright” he said_ **_no_ ** _._ **_No. No. No._ ** _Max had tried to complain about Sebastian not letting him see out, but once again one of his siblings, Alec this time, told him that the man made the best decision. In his mind he logically knew everything his siblings were doing was to keep him safe, but the fact they agreed with an absolute stranger over their own little brother, hurt._

_Izzy and Alec had talked back and forth about what was happening, where Aline was, and what they should do next. Max had then noticed that Izzy’s wrist was bleeding, and the blood was slowly seeping into her white sleeve jacket. She had told Sebastian, not Max, that she would get her stele and be right back._

_The very second she had left Sebastian had grabbed Max and dragged him into the kitchen. Max should have fought more, but like his lips had been earlier, his body was frozen. In his terror he let the man swiftly keep a choke hold on him, and then push him to the floor._

_When Max had heard his sister's footsteps approach the open kitchen door and her voice call out._ **_Max. Max. Max._ ** _He had wanted to tell her not to come in. That surely this man was going to kill him in cold blood, and he didn’t want Izzy to see her little brothers murder. He would never want Izzy to blame herself for his death._

_It was too late, though, she had stepped just inside the door frame and the smile she had held from thinking, hoping, that Sebastian taking her brother into another room with a mallet was a joke- disappeared, morphing into abject distress._ **_Stop it. Stop it. Stop it._ ** _Max’s sister had said in hardly even a whisper._

_Max could tell that Sebastian had almost given her a smile at that. Slowly. Calculatedly. He had said to Izzy, “Out of all of them, you were the one I thought you were_ **_most like me_ ** _.”_ **_Most like me. Most like me. Most like me._ **

_Sebastian had raised the hammer that he had used to nail boards on the windows in a form of defense, protection, and it turned into a weapon. In a wide arch it swung at Max’s head, he sincerely thought he would realize when it had smashed into his skull, but he hadn't felt it at all. In a way, Max was thankful for the absence of pain, but in another way he wasn’t because the pain should be punishment for the fact he should have listened to his siblings and stayed out of it._

_His sister might have screamed but most likely knowing her, she probably stayed completely silent and still. Like when an animal was getting hunted and it looked at the human’s eye through the scope and knew it was the end, so it paused hoping maybe it wouldn't get killed. Maybe mercy would be given, but it was the age old saying of “be the hunter or the hunted”._

_Max hoped that his family wouldn’t blame themselves for his death, but knowing the Lightwood motto, that was very unlikely. Mostly he hoped that his sister Isabelle Sophia Lightwood wouldn’t only blame herself._

_What Max actually saw in Sebastin’s outward beauty was not his appearance at all but into his soul. The man was truly a broken boy who grew up with an adult with opinions that were so extreme they allowed for no other ideas. Sebastian had grown up like Jace. Hurt, emotionally and physically. Belittled._

_The idea of purity was a subjective matter, and what one person sees as pure another will always be another ready to contradict that. Max had seen the way Alec looked at Magnus, and that to any open soul couldn’t be considered a sin. Just because they were two men loving each other. Just because one was a child of angle and the other of a devil._

_The boy mused, what would Sebastian would have been like if he got to be raised with Clary? She turned out pretty good. Would have had to, to be able to earn the trust, love, and respect of someone like Jace._

_It could have been a thousand years within the second that Max’s thoughts went like that before his glasses clattered to the ground shattering into pieces, just like his family would. Forever stained in the blood of a nine year old boy._

_A small part of him had the tiniest glimmer that he would live to see another day. That despite this inevitable death that was guaranteed to all known living things, he could survive. For his sibling, sure, but mostly- selfishly, for himself._

_»»————- ————-««_

2013 New York, Somewhere: 

When Maxwell Joseph Lightwood opened his eye for the first time in years he groaned, squinting his eyes against the morning light. There had been a pregnant pause for a second just so he could access if that somewhat deeper voice was in fact actually his. Trying to sit up he realized how heavy he felt. Heavy because he was soaking wet. 

Max’s “body” all except his shirt was clothed in the familiar and traditional black gear that shadowhunters always wore. The shirt he wore was a plain white color that was transparent because of the water soaking it, and he could see that on his skin was the faint outline of runes plus faint silvery scars that must have been old ones. 

He trusted himself to not believe he had gone crazy enough to be imagining that his body was not clothed or had that many runes when he died, right? Looking around him quickly to make sure this wasn’t just one big joke, not that it was likely, he didn’t spot Izzy, Alec, or Jace. At the thought of his family Max’s stomach curdled. How had Izzy taken his death? She would have taken it the hardest being there and not somehow stopping it. Max trusted Alec to be strong out the outside but just as hurt on the inside. 

When he had been looking around him Max had noticed he was on a very rocky shore somewhere in New York not Idris. The day was clear and although it was early he could tell it would be quite a nice one. Familiar tall buildings and skyscrapers rose into the air, and it reminded him of the time he had begged his parents to live with his sibling in the New York Institute. Of course both parents had vehemently refused, but it was worth the try at the very least.

To the right of his body was the water and to the left more land like the uneven part he was on. Ahead of him he saw a blond woman jogging with a similar shaded dog, a lab maybe? She had long black cords coming out of her ears attached to an ipod strapped to her arm. As the women ran in her flashy neon gear she seemed to notice Max, and instead of passing him did a very un-New Yorker thing and stopped when she reached him. 

“Hey Kid, where are your parents? Do you need help?” The women was giving him a strange look, but he didn’t pay attention because at the mention of _kid_ he shuddered. 

“Um… noo. I just decided to take a swim and forgot that I had clothes on.” When he had said that the women gave him a sceptical look, but more like a New Yorker shrugged it off and walked away. 

“Okay, If you say so.” 

“Wait!” Max shouted after her, and she paused. “What year is it?” 

“It’s 2013. Are you sure you don’t need medical help?”

Crap. “Yes.” 

_»»————- ————-««_

First thing Max needed to do was find a public restroom. Not necessarily because he needed to go to the bathroom, although he did a bit, but because he needed to look at himself in a very non vain way. Soaking wet he had laid on the rocks for a few minutes, and then forced himself to get up. 

When Max had made his way to the land on his left he had noticed it was a park. A nice concrete path made its way winding into the distance, and neatly mowed lined surrounded both sides. There were a fair amount of people up and walking, but most didn’t take too long to look at the boy and then turn their attention to whatever it had been on before. 

It took him a while to find the building with the markings of men and women figures on them. When he entered Max noticed that the bathroom was absolute crap, and then he cringed at his use of explicit language because surely one of his family members would reprimand him. Oh yeah, he had no idea where any of them were or if they were alive at all. It may have just been a sibling thing but he was positive neither of them were dead. 

The walls of the bathroom were a nasty yellow color that had probably once been white. Mirrors were right in front of him but they looked cheap and had scratches in them, some of them had words that were worse than crap. Stalls lined the wall to his right and they were also a strange yellow color that matched the walls.

Not sparing a second to look at himself Max decided to go do his business first then look at himself. When he had walked out of the stall, he headed for the sink to wash his hands and inspected himself. If it was truly 2013 it made sense why his voice had sounded deeper, and why his body felt disproportionately large. At Max’s age Alec had been almost 6 foot. 

Looking at himself in one of the least grimy and scratched mirrors Max’s eyes widened. He must have been at least the height Alec had been, and Max was in fact covered in the scars and old runes that he had seen through his soaked white shirt earlier. The strangest part was that the runes on his skin were a weird golden color, and Max knew runes were not usually that color. His skin looked otherwise healthy, shining the usual Lightwood snowy white shade. 

His hair was also a bit strange, it was mostly black but had strands of silver going throughout the whole thing. Sort of a salt and pepper style that shouldn't be present in a boy his age. Speaking of age Max must have looked at least fourteen, the age he should have been if he hadn't died. Wide but stern looking old eyes reflected back at him, and they were also the classic Lightwood midnight blue except they too had streaks of the golden, the same color of his runes. 

Max’s face had matured in addition, and most of the baby fat that had been there was gone instead replaced by a sharp jaw. His cheekbones were defined and complemented his defined nose. From an outsider's perspective Max thought he looked very handsome, but was someone even supposed to think that about themselves? It did look like him, just older. 

The real questions on his mind, though, was what was he? Why was he alive? And what should he do now? Max had no money, a phone, or any way to get in contact with his family. He supposed he could go to the New York Institute. Yes, that's what he’d do. Someone he knew had to be there. Right? 

_»»————- ————-««_

Max had first needed to look at one of the public maps to see where he should go. As a Shadowhunter, mapping was a valuable skill. He realized he was a decent distance from the Institute and, actually, he was almost in Brooklyn. The bridge could be seen from across the water. Since Max had no money he was just going to have to walk his way to the New York Institute.

While walking he noticed there were benches dotted around the place, and Max decided he would stop for a second to sit down at one. Looking ahead he noticed a playground and got really excited until he realized he had a body of a fourteen year old. Granted, there was nothing wrong with a teenager enjoying play structures that were not meant for their bodies, but as of right now bringing more attention to his currently damp body was not what Max needed. 

There did look to be a few kids playing on the measly set of poles, stairs, and slides that was to be considered a play area. It’s not like he even liked to play on playgrounds because he was a Shadowhunter, and Shadowhunter grew up fast so it would have been foolish even as a nine year old. Yeah, he was going to keep telling himself that. Max had always truly enjoyed books more than playing with kids his age. 

He had found himself a nice bench on the outskirts of the playground as well as under a tree and shaded from view so he couldn’t be seen. Max sat down. Nothing like watching kids play as you mourn your lost childhood. 

Taking a closer look at the two kids playing he released one of them was blue. A warlock then, maybe? Under another tree he noticed a man. Magnus! He looked the same age as last time Max had seen him, so as old as possible and yet so young. Seeing Magnus only made him think of Alec. Did that mean that Alec and Magnus had adopted children. When did he grow up? 

Haha, very funny, Max thought to himself. Alec had probably grown up sometime the last five years since Max had seen him. That probably meant Simon and Izzy were also together, and maybe even had kids. Okay probably not them, not yet at least. Startled when he looked up. Max saw the blue kid inspecting him with innocent curiosity. Max was also not prepared for when the little warlock started towards him. 

When the little kid did get to him Max asked, “What’s your name?” 

“Max Lightwood-Bane,” the kid replied innocently, not realizing the pain going through the teenager's heart. 

He hadn't been forgotten at all. 

Max Lightwood the first had been replaced. 


End file.
